If you outlaw throwing footballs on the beach, only outlaws will throw footballs on the beach:

The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County.

In passing the 37-page ordinance (PDF) on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public.

The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll” any object other than a beach ball or volleyball “upon or over any beach” between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

My guess is that the Board of Supervisors, in an abundance of concern for the health of all beach-goers, is worried that overly active people throwing footballs and frisbees could eventually lead to an innocent bystander spilling his container of complimentary City of Los Angeles heroin needles all over the sand, where an illegal alien might then step on one — and that’s a risk that can’t be taken. Goodbye frisbees and footballs!

Digging holes in the sand over 18 inches deep is also prohibited — unless you’re filming a movie or TV show of course:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Well, I’ve just finished scouring the White House visitor logs.

Regular readers know I seem to be one of the few in the media who actually does such a thing.

Regular readers also know that I’ve pointed out time and again that the logs are incomplete, misleading, obtuse, and designed to make it as difficult as possible to figure out who has visited and when.

So, it is no surprise that neither director Tim Burton nor actor Johnny Depp — hosts of the big 2009 Hollywood Halloween bash at the White House — show up in the visitor logs.

At least as far as I can tell.

Use the search function and look for yourselves.

This is a screen cap of the 10/31/09 list where Burton’s name should be (click for full size):

And this is a screen cap of the 10/31/09 list where Depp’s name should be (click for full size):

Actress Mia Wasikowska, who played Alice, was also at the White House for picture-taking, along with several other cast members.

Her name is also missing from the logs.

On FanPop via Verum Serum, several photos show the celebs posing inside the White House:

The party held in the State Dining Room and East Room benefited military families — always a good thing. That’s besides the point.

The Tinseltown cover-up, hushed to avert bad press when the economy was stuck in a recession and the Tea Party was on the rise, simply underscores the cloud-based transparency that has marked this administration from day one.

It is laughable that the White House reaction is to call the story “old news” — when the White House visitor log keepers apparently have yet to be told of the visits.

Looks like disclosure-subverting business as usual.

***

Flashback: Obama’s Coffee House Loophole

Archive of previous Obama transparency posts here.

Hip-Hop empresario Jay-Z has expressed his support Occupy Wall Street in his own way before. If reports of the trip to the hospital for the birth of Jay-Z and Beyonce’s baby are accurate, he’s still standing behind the 99%… actually, way behind them, down the hall, past the security guards and up the elevator:

To accommodate the influential couple’s demand for privacy at Lenox Hill Hospital, other new and expecting parents said they were essentially put on “lockdown” and even booted out of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) — on the same floor as Beyonce’s delivery “suite” — so the pampered songstress and her party could come and go unencumbered.

“They just used the hospital like it was their own and nobody else mattered,” raged new dad Neil Coulon, whose efforts to see his premature, newborn twins in the NICU were disrupted by the birth of little Blue Ivy Carter.

“They locked us into the NICU and would say, ‘You can’t come out to the hallway for the next 20 minutes.’ When I finally was able to go back out, I went to the waiting room and they’d ushered my family downstairs!”

Congrats to the happy parents! And by “happy parents” I mean Jay-Z and Beyonce, because some of the other parents at the hospital still don’t sound very happy:

Last night, at least four security guards stood watch at the hospital’s fourth-floor elevator bank, where new parents and grandparents were still voicing their frustrations over security measures that delayed or completely prevented them from visiting.

“People are really upset and complaining,” said the hospital worker, noting that the medical staff has to “shut down” whenever there’s movement on Beyoncé’s part.

But at the end of the day, there was another satisfied 99er courtesy of a fabulously wealthy OWS advocate:

Coulon scoffed at the double-standard treatment.

“I know they spent $1.3 million and I’m just a contractor from Bed-Stuy, but the treatment we received was not okay,” Coulon said.

Cool it, dude — if you play your cards right you might be allowed up to the private suites and given the opportunity to purchase matching OWS onesies for your newborn twins.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Actress Julianne Moore, who happens to be of Hollywood liberal pedigree, is playing the part of Sarah Palin in “Game Change,” an HBO movie from a screenplay adapted by a liberal and directed by a liberal. But that’s balanced out because the part of John McCain is being played by an actor who is a liberal, and the role of McCain’s advisor Steve Schmidt will be handled by Woody Harrelson, who is — you guessed it — a noted lefty (Richard Dreyfuss and Josh Brolin must have had other obligations).

No matter what level of objectivity, or lack thereof, “Game Change” displays, after these last three years, the movie might accomplish little except to make people wonder what might have been. In other words, the producers might end up with a sinking feeling that they released this flick two and a half years too late.

I’m told the movie is rated PG-13, and that’s due mostly to a fairly torrid love scene between McCain and Russ Feingold. Here’s a preview:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

NBC’s Law & Order franchise has had some fun taking swipes at the right — from the Tea Party to conservative talkers — but an upcoming episode of Law & Order SVU was set to revolve around the Occupy Wall Street protests.

It’s unlikely that the script calls for OWS to be cast in a negative light, but we may never know. As it turns out, Law & Order SUV’s “Occupy” set was… occupied:

More than 100 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators stormed the set for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” across from the Manhattan State Supreme Courthouse, shutting down production of an OWS-themed episode.

“We made it so that they could not exploit us and that’s awesome,” said Tammy Schapiro, 29, of Brooklyn.

The protesters arrived around midnight at Foley Square and roamed around the park inspecting tents and signs built by the production company.

“This is not us,” said Drew Hornbein, 24, of Brooklyn Heights. “We are not part of corporate TV America.”
[...]
After midnight, a police officer on a bullhorn announced that the film permit had been rescinded by the city, which drew cheers from the crowd.

The empathetic upper one-percent’s Hollywood dramatization of the Revolution will not be televised.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Miley Cyrus, Occupier Poster Girl
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

She’s perfect. Miley Cyrus, Hollywood’s perpetually half-dressed wild child with an insatiable appetite for attention, jumped in front of the Occupy Wall Street bandwagon this week. The young Disney mogul unveiled a YouTube anthem hailing the aimless, anti-capitalist protesters. Smells like opportunistic teen queen spirit.

Like so much of the warmed-over, Big Labor-underwritten Occupy movement, Miley’s musical tribute to its foot soldiers is a worn-out derivative remix. She took “Liberty Walk,” a year-old single; spliced in video footage of union marchers carrying carbon-copy “TAKE BACK OUR DEMOCRACY” signs; tossed in random scenes of global discontent from London to China to San Diego to Salem, Oregon; slapped on a treacly dedication to “the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in” (like, whatever that is); stirred; auto-tuned; and released:

“Sayin’ goodbye to the people who tied you up/ It’s a liberty walk, walk/ Feelin’ your heart again/ Breathin’ new oxygen/ It’s a liberty walk, walk/ Free yourself, slam the door, not a prisoner anymore!”

Somehow, all the Occupier outbreaks of lice, public defecation, property destruction and rape got left on the cutting room floor.

Hipsters are horrified by the Hollywood hijacking. To borrow a favorite Occupier phrase, they rained “downtwinkles” on the starlet. One Occupy activist prominently distanced herself from Hannah Montana, Teen Revolutionary, and issued a challenge. Priscilla Grim, an Occupy flack, told the website TMZ that while Miley’s music video “‘rocks’ in spirit … she doubts the singer has the guts to actually hit the streets.” Grim dared “Ms. Cyrus” to “fight on the front line of economic civil rights” and join the agitators at Los Angeles City Hall.

Will Miley put her Louboutins where her vocal cords are? With an estimated net worth of $120 million, the radical chic poseur is no dummy. While her video stokes anti-police hostility and anti-bank rage, she and her managers can safely raise their figurative fists with one hand while inking new corporate deals with the other.

One YouTube commenter decried Tinseltown’s “cynical ploy”:

“This is disgusting. Another celebrity cashing in on the Occupy movement for their own profit. First (rapper) Jay-Z selling T-shirts and giving no money to the movement and now this. It might be different if she was giving all the profits from this song to the movement, but she’s keeping all of it for herself. I am an active member of Occupy — and on behalf of the movement I would like to say f**k you Miley Cyrus and f**k you Jay-Z. You are blood-sucking scum!”

That’s just a bit harsh. After all, diehard Occupiers themselves are hawking photos, documentaries and all manner of assorted swag from one coast to the other, while live-streaming their nocturnal, police-obstructing parties over corporate airwaves. They’ve opened bank accounts with the same companies their masked peers have vandalized. Their union elders are cutting deals with the same retailers they besieged on Black Friday.

In so many ways, Miley and the Occu-mob are a match made in heaven. Vacuous. Hypocritical. Entitled. Vain. Nihilist. Exhibitionist. Coddled. Forever adolescent, treating life like an endless “Party in the U.S.A.,” and demanding that everyone else pay for it.

This is Adam Levine of the band Maroon 5.

If you have tween-age daughters or aspiring pop star sons, you know who this guy is. And yes, you may even have been guilty of downloading his songs on iTunes or buying his CDs.

Pleading guilty.

Well, if you also happen to be conservative and enjoy Fox News, Adam Levine doesn’t want your money.

He doesn’t want Fox News playing his music.

And he is spitting profanities about it on Twitter.

Good to know:

Levine: “Dear Fox News, don’t play our music on your evil fucking channel ever again. Thank you.”

Twitter user “Brock Boehlert” retorts: “Hey @adamlevine how much did you make from Fox when ‘Harder To Breathe’ was used on American Idol?”

There’s a word for this kind of irrational, self-defeating, blanket hatred: Bigotry.

In the name of protesting bigotry, Adam Levine practices it.

He’d make a perfect Occupy Wall Street/Code Pinko poster boy.

#moveslikemoonbat

In between bouts of anti-Semitic rants (that loony, Jew-bashing L.A. teacher was just fired, by the way), we have New York City occupiers holding up signs like this:

The perfect cheerleader for this mess of a “movement?” Why, Capital One bank shill and Hollywood elitist Alec Baldwin, of course! He spent two hours at the park yesterday — and all night promoting it. He’s quick to point out he donated his Capital One fees to arts charities. But as Audrey Pietrucha noted: “It is interesting, though, that Baldwin would choose to partner with a bank rather than, say, the National Endowment for the Arts. Perhaps corporations have their uses after all.”

Indeed.

Questions abound:

So, is Capital One a “Nazi Bank” or a “Jewish-run bank?” Does Baldwin get more up twinkles or down twinkles? And will MTV hire him for the new Occupy Wall Street reality show?

Over to you, OWS. Video h/t The Right Scoop:

***

I joked last night that protesters should “Hide the women, children, and baristas” in preparation for the unhinged actor’s arrival.

But safety issues are no joke at these chaotic camps.

*‘Occupy Cleveland’ Protester Alleges She Was Raped

*A convicted felon believed to be part of the Occupy Seattle protest was arrested at the demonstration after he was found carrying an unloaded rifle in a bag, along with 16 rounds of ammunition, police said on Tuesday.

*Sex offender registered to Occupy Portland shares story

*From Sister Toldjah: SHOCKING: Occupy Baltimore has own court system set up for rape allegations

Police have made areas where Wall Streeters work off-limits, but if the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters want a closer glimpse of Wall Street enablers, all they might need to do is have a look around at some of their more famous supporters.

Three of the most prominent celebrity names I’ve read about who are supporting the protesters are Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin. All have their connections to Wall Street — just not in a “teaching them how to live with less” kind of way.

Legendary Hollywood lefty Susan Sarandon, in addition to having reaped untold amounts of money by making movies for New Line Cinema and Warner Brothers (Time Warner) as well as Paramount (Viacom), does voice-overs in ads, one for a notoriously anti-profit company you may have heard of called Disney:

At last check, Disney stock was trading on Wall Street at $30.85.

Sarandon has also appeared in ads for Revlon, which at last glance was trading on Wall Street at $12.37.

Incidentally, Disney was the parent company of Miramax, the production studio that financed filmmaker and “Occupy Wall Street” supporter Michael Moore’s most profitable movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. After the movie was finished, Disney prevented Miramax from distributing Fahrenheit, so that’s when Lions Gate Entertainment stepped in. Lions Gate is trading today on Wall Street at around $6.96. Moore is in the process of suing for almost $3 million in additional profit from the movie that will finance his crusade against corporate greed for the foreseeable future.

Alec Baldwin has defended “Occupy Wall Street” protesters by criticizing how the police are treating them. Baldwin’s involvement also helps lend the stand against corporate greed the credibility that only the star of 30 Rock, which airs on NBC, which is owned by Comcast, can provide. At the time of this writing, Comcast is trading on Wall Street at $21.30 a share.

Baldwin also shows his support for the “Occupy Wall Street” cause through other public service projects, such as appearances in ads for Capital One:

Capital One is trading on Wall Street at about $38.80 a share today, and I’m sure the company will be more than happy to comply with demand #11 of the Occupy Wall Street movement: “Across the board debt forgiveness for all.” Occupy Wall Street protesters should have Alec ask them about that.

Now go get that evil Wall Street, celebs! That’ll teach you! Er, I mean them… sorry…

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I’ll have my say about the loser Alinsky-ite slumber party that took over the Brooklyn Bridge later today.

For now, I’m keeping it positive on this gorgeous Sunday afternoon. There are signs of hope out there in Hollyweird that punks can and do grow up.

Here’s the trailer for “The Other F Word” — an intriguing new documentary on rocker fathers (including Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Mark Hoppus from Blink 182) who reflect on how having children changed their lives.

Takeaway quote from Flea:

“The classic parent attitude to a kid is ‘I brought you into this world, I gave you life.’ But it’s like, I just think completely the opposite. My kids gave me life.”

Rock on, dad…

For some time now, the “Patriotic Millionaire” types, which would include Matt Damon, Warren Buffett and many others who think they have too much money and that the people who helped put the US almost $15 trillion in debt would spend it more wisely, have been begging the government to raise their taxes.

It’s been pointed out time and time again that these people (who undoubtedly employ armies of accountants to eek out every possible deduction at tax time) don’t need to wait for the government to confiscate their money — the Treasury Department will gladly accept their donations.

Chuck Woolery — yes, that one — has a similar message for them. Hey, if starring in various movies qualified Sissy Spacek, Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep to testify before Congress about farm subsidies and Alar, then having hosted a game show called “Greed” qualifies Woolery to discuss hypocrisy among America’s guilt-ridden well-to-do.

Video by way of Big Hollywood:

Woolery should team up with Pat Sajak for a game show called “Wheel of Hypocrites.”

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

So, the foul-mouthed rapper “Soulja Boy” told American soldiers to go “f**k” off in a new rap video and insulted them for not being real men.

Now, he says he didn’t really mean it — and, in fact, the reason he said “f**k” our “Army troops” is that he cares about them so much and respects them and just wants them home. Really.

More on the supposedly heartfelt apology in a moment.

The story came to light over the weekend on TMZ:

A proud military veteran is demanding an apology from Soulja Boy — after the rapper posted a video saying, “f**k the army troops.”

Soulja ignited a wave of controversy this week over his new song, “Let’s Be Real” — which includes the lyrics:

“F**k the FBI and the army troops … fighting for what? Be your own man …

… I’ll be flying through the clouds with green like I’m Peter Pan.”

Here’s the video. Warning: It’s profanity-laced and headache-inducing:

Rap mogul Russell Simmons is “proud” of Soulja Boy for this “emotional” apology:

As an artist, I let my words get the best of me. Sometimes there are things that we feel, things that we want to express, and when we put them on paper and speak them out loud, they can come out wrong. When I expressed my frustration with the US Army, not only did my words come out wrong, I was wrong to even speak them. So, I write this to give my sincerest apology to all members of the United States military services, as well as their families that were offended by my most recent lyrics.

…In no way would I ever want to offend those who are protecting our freedoms … a lot of homeboys who I grew up with, a lot of people who come from the neighborhoods we live in … In no way do I want to hurt any of our honorable soldiers who put their lives at risk, regardless of how they feel about the two wars we fight in. I am just frustrated that we haven’t been able to bring you all home quick enough and my frustration got the best of me. I am deeply sorry.

A truly sincere apology would have acknowledged that “Soulja Boy” (what a name for a coward who disses the troops, eh?) was pandering to military-hating fans, not “expressing his frustration” over long, military engagements.

Note that no apology was made to those who serve in the FBI.

Just wondering: Has “Soulja Boy” ever penned lyrics telling jihadists to “f***” off? Be your own man for once, “Soulja.” Try it.

The next most offensive words in his apology: “As an artist…”

Oy.

***

The Military Times notes that our troops have enjoyed and supported “Soulja Boy’s” work in the past. Maybe they’ll think twice now:

I think it’s safe to say Marines won’t be dancing to “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” at the Marine Corps Birthday Ball again this year.

***

LOVE this. An Army sergeant responds Leo Dunson (website here) to “Soulja Boy” with his own rap — “Change Your Name” (NSFW – language warning):

***

Update: More troop responses on Youtube — language warning — via This Ain’t Hell:

Army soldier Stephen Hobbs in Afghanistan has his own rap for Soulja Boy:

Katy Perry is a pop singer/songwriter who churns out annoying Billboard hits (“Firework,” “Teenage Dream,” “Hot N Cold”) that your tween-age kids love and you love to hate (yes, I speak from experience). She made news this week after tying Michael Jackson’s record of scoring 5 #1 Billboard hits off a single album.

She also made some little-noticed waves on Twitter that should be newsworthy.

In a response to a fan of hers on Monday, she tweeted:

Over the past 24 hours, all hell has broken loose — with Palestinian, Muslim, and progressive Twitter followers lashing out at Perry for her innocuous tweet asking others to pray for Israel. Here’s a small sample:

Many of her fans in Israel praised her for taking a stand. But alas, their praise was premature.

Late on Monday night, you see, Perry backed off. Pray for Israel? Neeevvver mind:

Not that she’ll be able to appease the unappeasable.

More from the peaceniks:

Baby, you’re a Dhimmi Work…

Movie star Matt Damon has made a few notable appearances on this blog over the years — for his blind championing of the late radical Marxist academic Howard Zinn and his Sarah Palin Derangement Syndrome. He’s back today in my syndicated column for his ignorant diatribe against “drill and kill” education methods and lifetime teacher tenure critics.

Lights, camera, agitation!

***

Schooling Matt Damon
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Actor Matt Damon is a walking, talking public service reminder to immunize your children early and often against La-La-Land disease.

In Damon’s world, all public school teachers are selfless angels. Government workers and Hollywood entertainers are impervious to economic incentives. And anyone who disagrees is a know-nothing, “corporate reformer” ingrate who hates education.

Last week, the liberal box-office star addressed a “Save Our Schools” march in Washington at the behest of his mother, a professor of early childhood education. He attacked standardized tests. He praised all the public school teachers who “empowered” him and unlocked his creative potential by rejecting “silly drill and kill nonsense.” Speaking on behalf of “an army of regular people,” Damon decried the demoralization of teachers by ruthless, results-oriented free marketeers whom he mocked as “simple-minded.”

What Damon’s superficial tirade lacked, however, was any real-world understanding of the deterioration of core curricular learning in America. Students can’t master simple division or fractions because today’s teachers — churned out through lowest common denominator grad schools and shielded from competition — have barely mastered those skills themselves. Un-educators have abandoned “drill and kill” computation for multicultural claptrap and fuzzy math, traded in grammar fundamentals for “creative spelling,” and dropped standard civics for save-the-earth propaganda and Alinskyite activism.

Consequence: bottom-basement U.S. student scores on global assessments over the past two decades. Blaming the tests is blaming the messenger. The liberal education establishment’s response to its abject academic failures? Run away. This is why the Save Our Schools agenda championed by Damon calls for less curricular emphasis on math and reading — and more focus on social justice, funding and “equity” issues.

Out: Reading is fundamental.

In: Feeling is fundamental.

After his drippy pep talk absolving teachers of any responsibility for America’s educational morass, Damon then lashed out at a young libertarian reporter who had the audacity to ask him about the negative impact of lifetime teacher tenure. “In acting there isn’t job security, right?” Reason.tv’s Michelle Fields asked Damon. “There is an incentive to work hard and be a better actor because you want to have a job. So why isn’t it like that for teachers?”

Watch here:

It’s elementary that people will work longer and harder if they know they will be rewarded. There’s nothing anti-teacher about the question. (And before teachers-unions goons go on the attack, I am the child of a public school teacher and the mother of two children in an excellent public charter school by choice.) But Damon’s hinges came undone when confronted with the mild question.

“You think job insecurity makes me work hard?” he retorted. “That’s like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when she has tenure.” Gathering all the creative potential he could muster, Damon unleashed crude profanities on Fields. “A teacher wants to teach,” Damon fumed with his mother next to him. “Why else would you take a sh**ty” salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really loved to do it?”

Never mind that most out-of-work Americans would find nothing “sh**ty” about earning an average $53,000 annual salary plus health and retirement benefits for a 180-day work year.

Damon went on to deride standard, mainstream behavioral economic principles as “intrinsically paternalistic” and “MBA-style thinking.” And when the young reporter’s cameraman pointed out that there are bad apples in the teaching profession as in any profession, Damon called him “sh**ty,” too.

Tinseltown stars can afford to put emotion over logic, progressive fantasy over practical reality. The rest of us are stuck with the bill. And those whom bleeding-heart celebrities purport to care most about — the children — suffer the consequences of bad ideas.

Interminable teacher tenure in America’s largest school districts, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, has produced a rotten corps of incompetent (at best) and dangerous (at worst) educators coddled by Big Labor. As the D.C.-based Center for Union Facts reports, “In many major cities, only one out of 1,000 teachers is fired for performance-related reasons. … In 10 years, only about 47 out of 100,000 teachers were actually terminated from New Jersey’s schools.”

By contrast, as the educational documentary “Waiting for Superman” (produced by avowed liberal turned reformer Davis Guggenheim) pointed out, one out of every 57 doctors loses his or her license to practice medicine, and one out of every 97 lawyers loses their license to practice law.

In Los Angeles, it’s not just meanie tea party terrorists making the case for abolishing teacher tenure. When the Los Angeles Times exposed how the city’s tenure evaluation system rubber-stamped approvals and ignored actual performance, the district superintendent admitted: “Too many ineffective teachers are falling into tenured positions — the equivalent of jobs for life.” USC education professor Julie Slayton acknowledged: “It’s ridiculous and should be changed.”

Pop quiz: Would multimillionaire Matt Damon apply the same warped employment practices and dumbed-down curricular standards to his own accountants that he champions for America’s public school teachers? Film at 11.

***

Related background reading:

Rank-and-file teachers speak truth to prog power

Fake sick teachers may cost Wisconsin taxpayers at least $6 million

Union pay chart of the day

Teachers’ Unions 101: “A” is for “agitation”

Obama’s Sputter-nik moment: Cash for Education Clunkers

Fuzzy math: A nationwide epidemic

***

Must-read: How the American Federation for Teachers plotted to deceive parents and the public to subvert school reform

***

Obama’s Ministers of Culture and Agitprop
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Immediately after President Obama took office, his Hollywood benefactors clamored for the creation of a “Secretary of Culture.” Tinseltown was disappointed in the administration’s crony arts czar choice (Chicago lawyer Kareem Dale), but left-wing artists and entertainers have now been mollified.

Instead of one government-supported arts czar, the White House has designated an entire herd of them.

On Tuesday, as part of Obama’s “Winning the Future” initiative, the president designated members of the liberal activist group Creative Coalition as official “America’s Champions of Change for the Arts.” This is the latest in a series of “public engagement” efforts overseen by Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and her high-paid, tax-funded staff of thinly-veiled campaign workers operating out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Honored guests at the event included ardent Obama supporters and Hollywood stars Patricia Arquette, Omar Epps, Minnie Driver, and Rachael Leigh Cook. Creative Coalition CEO, Robin Bronk, crowed in a p.r. release: “Rarely before in the history of our country has change been more important, so we are proud to be recognized as a ‘Champion of Change’. By sharing our ideas on the arts and arts education with the Obama administration, we can ensure the next generation of Americans have the same opportunities to express their creativity.”

Ignore the high-minded talk of artistic free speech. This is nothing more than a Celebrity Rewards Program masquerading as cultural “dialogue” (or more, accurately, echo chamber chatter).

When the Creative Coalition – comprised of some of the entertainment world’s most zealous and wealthy Obama donors – talks of the need to “make the arts a topic of priority,” it means massively increased funding for the National Endowment of the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts. It means using the power of government to turn artists and entertainers into Obama policy lobbyists. And it means buying access not for “ordinary Americans,” but for the out-of-touch elitists who use all public channels and platforms to denigrate traditional values and principles.

The Creative Coalition is the group that threw the swankiest inaugural parties for Obama studded with producers, actors, directors, and writers. The Creative Coalition/Obama galas included a lavish inaugural party sponsored by Moet & Chandon, which passed out big fat bottles of pricey wine sporting customized “Obama is the Man” labels. (Quick, someone alert that crazy Rutgers professor who attacked GOP Rep. Paul Ryan over his beverage choices.) They clamored for $50 million in stimulus pork and still want more.

Members of the Creative Coalition were also entangled in the 2009 NEA/White House campaign to recruit 75 artists, musicians, writers and poets as political “counter-narrative” creators during the health care takecover battle. Then-Office of Public Engagement top officials Tina Tchen and Buffy Wicks urged participants to “sustain energy from the election process” and “think through how their networks and organizations can participate in areas such as the arts in education, healthcare and preventative care, energy and environment, or economic opportunity.”

In other words: Not art for art’s sake. But art for Obama’s sake.

The White House and its “Champions of Change for the Arts” are flirting dangerously with an Orwellian-style Ministry of Arts Agitprop akin to Europe’s and China’s. America doesn’t need ideologically-skewed keepers of the culture in government-sanctioned positions espousing what’s best for readers, viewers, and listeners’ consumption – and using tax dollars to shape our tastes and politics. The best way for this White House to stimulate free, unfettered conversation about the arts is to butt out of it.